The Mammoth Book Of Regency Romance Part 53

She turned away, not knowing where she was going, not caring. She was almost at the door when Etta slipped her hand through Clarinda's arm and turned her around. Her friend's eyes were shining, her cheeks flushed. She looked like a woman in love, Clarinda decided bleakly.

She was so busy being miserable she didn't at first take in the words Etta was saying to her.

"He is my brother! I . . . I was foolish enough to run off with someone totally unsuitable while James was away in the army. Our elder brother, Lord Hollingbury, disowned me, even when I begged to be allowed to come home."

"Your . . . your brother?" Clarinda whispered.

"James came to Bath to find me."

Clarinda looked up and found her eyes held and captured by those of James Quentin, and suddenly she realized how like Etta's they were both so dark and warm and dear.

"I had sworn I would find her and make all well again," he said softly. "I had people searching and discovered she had married and was hiding in Bath, so I came to fetch her home."

Etta laughed. "Only this is my home now."

"But . . ." Clarinda looked from one to the other. "You do not mean Dr Moorcroft is the unsuitable man you . . . ?"

"Oh no. I met him later, and fell in love. I have been very fortunate."

As if her words had conjured him up, her doctor joined their little group. For a moment the emotion ran high, before Etta and her husband departed to the supper room.

"I made a bit of a hash of it, didn't I?" James broke the silence between them. They had stepped into an ante-room, hidden from the crowd by draped curtains. He smiled, his eyes seeming to caress her and warm her.

"No," she said, her voice trembling with pa.s.sion, "it was my fault. I thought there was no hope and I couldn't let myself believe. I couldn't bear it. So I sent you away." She lifted her head and gazed into his face. "Did you really come to Bath to find Etta?"

"Yes. But I found you, Clarinda. My darling, will you marry me? Will you be my Lady Hollingbury?"

Clarinda allowed her whirling thoughts to settle. There was her aunt, but she seemed to have found a new life. There was Lucy, but Lucy had a mind of her own it seemed and wasn't going to fall in with Clarinda's idea of her future. And that left Clarinda.

"Yes," she said, and a wave of such happiness washed over her.

He took her into his arms. "I will never complain about Bath weather again," he whispered against her lips, "because that is what brought us together."

And then he kissed her.

Gretna Green.

Sharon Page.

He had caught gangs of murderers in the stews off Whitechapel High Street. Arrested opium dealers in seedy brothels near the Wapping docks. But in all the years he had worked for Bow Street as a Runner, Trevelyan Foxton had never been required to investigate in a more foreign and intimidating place.

He watched the shop from across the street, drawing smoke from his cheroot. Each time the door opened, the silver bell tinkled delicately, and he caught the faint scents of rose and lavender. Ladies flowed in and out continuously. Ladies of every age and every description slender, giggling girls, with shining eyes, and their mamas, the formidable matrons of the ton. And from within, all he could hear was incessant feminine chatter.

Trevelyan glanced up at the name above the shop, proudly displayed on a large sign, painted in burgundy and ivory, glimmering with gilt.

No longer was she plain Sally Thomas. She was now Estelle Desjardins. He'd caught a glimpse of her when the door opened. She wore severe black and had pins stuck in her mouth. She had been pointing at a thin, sallow girl who looked miserable in an ivory dress. And, at the same time, she was lecturing the mother, a bosomy, grey-haired woman he recognized as the d.u.c.h.ess of St Ives.

Now that was the Sally he remembered.

She'd been the toughest, hardest and fiercest of their gang. All of the lads the pickpockets, the mudlarks, the thieves had been afraid of her. Except for him. He knew the one thing that frightened Sally. When he wanted her to shut her mouth, all he had to do was kiss her. Or show her he cared about her.

That had been a long time ago. Back in the days when he never would have dreamed he'd end up on the good side of the law as a Bow Street Runner. Back then he never would have pictured Sally in anything but a ragged dress, with her fists doubled and her point of a chin stuck out. Never would he have pictured her looking down her nose at grand ladies.

Trevelyan tossed away his cheroot and ground it into the cobblestones of the street.

Sally had done well for herself.

It was a shame he was going to have to destroy her.

Estelle froze. All thoughts of what exact shade of ivory the daughter of the Duke of St Ives should wear vanished from her head. It no longer mattered that the fashion was now for long sleeves. Or that it could be possible to make Lady Amelia's bosom appear more ample, with strategic pleating and a lot of padding.

He stood in the doorway, the proverbial bull in the china shop. At once her lavender sachets were overwhelmed by the rich, refined, masculine scent of him, of smoke, shaving soap, and sandalwood. His straight shoulders filled the doorway from side to side. His gaze sharp, intelligent glinted with an amus.e.m.e.nt that made her quake, and fastened immediately on her.

She had wondered if he would ever come and find her. It would be so easy for Trevelyan to get his revenge, which he surely must want.

All he had to do was tell every lady in her shop exactly where she had come from and who she really was.

A pin jabbed into her tongue. Estelle spat them into her hand. The attention of every woman in her salon riveted on him. He had to duck for the doorway, and he took off his beaver hat to clear it, revealing his striking coal-black hair and the one streak of white that began at his temple and followed the sweep of his unfashionably long hair to his shoulder.

"Madame Desjardins," he said, with a perfunctory bow. He straightened, then ensured he closed the door behind him, a sardonic smile on his mouth. "Is it intended to mean 'Star of the Gardens'? I like that very much."

Her stomach almost dropped away. What did he want? "May I help you, Mr Foxton?"

The buzz began at once.

"Goodness, Mr Foxton is a Bow Street Runner," whispered Lady Amelia to her bosom-bow, Lady Caroline.

Lady Caroline put her gloved hand to her mouth and her eyes glittered with delight. "What is he doing here? Do you think there's been a crime committed?"

"You mean other than these prices?" muttered Lady Caroline's mother.

"Have you heard?" one young lady whispered. "It is said that Mr Foxton is the heir to the Earl of Doncaster."

Estelle froze. She took care to know the gossip of the ton. How could she not have known this?

"That cannot be true. I heard that he grew up in the East End stews," declared the voluptuous Countess of Bournemouth. "And that he has a very sordid past." She said it breathily, as though "sordid" was a commendable thing.

"I think he is trying to look down Lady Armitage's bodice!"

That would not surprise Estelle. Trevelyan had always been a rogue. And he appeared to enjoy making her clients shocked and uncomfortable. "Madame Desjardins," he began, in a voice that had deepened and roughened and grown even more magnetic in ten years, "I hate to trouble you, but I would like a private word."

The ladies gasped. For, of course, it meant he must walk through her shop, past the curtained rooms in which women stood in various states of undress. "Miss Sims," she instructed her best seamstress, "advise the ladies to keep their curtains closed, if you please. Mr Foxton, you may come to my office. I a.s.sume a respectable representative of Bow Street will keep his eyes averted."

Oh, she was not prepared to have him in her private office. At once he went to her desk and tried the drawers. "The key, please, Sal."

That name. She had not heard it for ten years. It was not her name any more. "If you want my help, do not call me that, Lyan." She carried her keys in a pocket sewn into her dress, skilfully designed so as not to ruin the line of the smooth-flowing skirt.

This was her sanctuary this office, this shop. "Do you wish to see my book of accounts? You are free to review it, if you are interested in what a satin ball gown costs these days. If it's the measurements of my clients that interest you, I will not help you there. That information rests only in my head."

He pulled out her ledger, planted his trouser-clad derriere on the edge of her desk, and flipped open the book. "I am here about Lady Maryanne Bryght."

A shudder of apprehension slid down her spine. "Lady Maryanne? I do believe she was a client of mine. But why-?"

Her book of accounts landed, closed, on her desk. His green eyes had narrowed, and he looked so expressionless, she shivered. The Lyan she remembered had never looked so cold.

"You're lying to me, Sal. That's why I never came to see you before. I knew all you'd give me was a pack of lies."

"Perhaps you should question me first, before a.s.suming that's all I will do." She tipped up her chin and spoke with the bravado she'd cultivated on the streets.

"At first, I suspected Lady Maryanne never came to see you. I a.s.sumed she used your appointment in order to leave the house so early in the morning. I believed she'd headed for Gretna Green instead."

In the stews, she had stared down any number of men from randy young toffs to vicious pimps looking to drag her into their seedy flash-houses. But she was quaking now. "Then you should be able to find her."

"Angel, that appointment was five days ago. She should have returned a happily married woman by now. I followed her tracks along the Great North Road as far as the border, and then she disappears. No one in Gretna remembers her. If she was wed over the anvil, no one will admit to performing the ceremony. She's vanished into thin air."

Estelle swallowed hard. That made no sense. She had investigated Lady Maryanne's handsome young scholar. That was what she did. She smoothed the course of true love for young ladies about to be forced into loveless marriages. She had made her choice years ago security over love. But that did not mean she could bear to see innocent women made into prisoners in their marriages. This gave her the chance to see others have what she couldn't.

Her investigation had revealed the gentleman Maryanne adored to be exactly what he claimed a studious, respectable, n.o.ble young man, the youngest son of a now-impoverished viscount. "Do you know who she ran away with?" she asked, trying to look shocked.

This was a nightmare. There was no one in London in all England who knew her like Lyan did. If anyone could see through lies, it would be he.

"Yes. Don't you?"

She imagined he hoped she would incriminate herself. But there was nothing more she could tell him. She had watched Lady Maryanne climb into a hackney, and had loaned the eighteen-year-old girl a purse filled with money to finance the journey (since, like most girls, Maryanne had no access to money on her own).

She had sent Maryanne on her escape to true love.

She had hoped Maryanne had crossed the border into Scotland, where a young couple needed no one's consent but their own to marry. As soon as they had crossed the border, lovers could marry anywhere, but Gretna Green was close and, since the couple usually wanted to be joined in haste, that was where they would stop. Vows were spoken over the anvil at the blacksmiths' shops, officiated by the blacksmith priests.

Maryanne must now be safely wed. And blurting out the truth of what she had done would not accomplish anything. It would not give Trevelyan any more information than he already had. It would destroy her. And she was not the only person she had to worry about.

"Lady Maryanne came here that morning. We had another fitting. Dresses for her wedding trousseau for her upcoming nuptials with her guardian, Lord Cavendish." She managed not to shudder at the name. "I do not know any more than that, Lyan."

"You do, love. Everything about you screams to me that you're keeping secrets. You always looked your most defiant when you were telling me a tale. Now, how about we strike up a bargain? You tell me everything, and I won't go back out and have a nice chat about our childhood with the d.u.c.h.ess of St Ives."

"Don't. Don't ruin me, Lyan. It may please you to see me lose everything, but I would not be the only one to suffer. You see, I have a daughter."

She could not have stunned him more if she'd hit him with a plank. She could see that from the way all six feet of him lurched back on his heels. And she knew what he must think.

"No, she is not your child. But I will be d.a.m.ned if I will end up like my mother poor and in some stinking, wretched flash-house. My daughter is almost nine years of age." She lied there. It had been ten years since she had last seen Trevelyan. Since she had panicked and gathered up half the money she knew he hid in his grotty room, and run away with it. "You know what her life would be like if I have to go back there." Her voice was shaking, no matter how much she tried to calm it.

"Who is her father, Sal?"

"That is none of your business."

"As I remember, the last time I saw you, you had agreed to marry me. We had our little ceremony in that warehouse. And we consummated our marriage on the floor of it."

She winced. He had lowered his voice, and his words were a smooth-as-honey murmur beside her ear. "I'd say that does make it my business."

Then, before she could stop him, before she could react, he spun her around, put his hands on her upper arms, and slanted his mouth over hers.

At first she froze in shock. And horror.

She stayed as rigid as her metal mannequins or she tried. He was so much bigger than she remembered.

Then the tension the fear began to evaporate. Something else pounded in its place. Desire. Hot, maddening, inconvenient, disastrous desire.

He tasted of smoke, of liquor and coffee, of heat and man and sin. Every decadent thing about men she could imagine was imprinted on her lips by Lyan's mouth. He tipped her off her feet, so she had to wrap her arms around his broad back. She melted, like wax beneath a candle's flame.

Oh. Oh. Ooooh. She'd kissed him before. Made love to him before, which had been the most dazzling, wet, hot, wonderful and heartbreaking night of her life. She should be impervious to his skill much more skill than he had ten years ago. His lips teased hers. His mouth forced hers wide and she loved it. And she moaned, breathlessly, as his tongue slid in and played and reminded her of what she'd dreamed of him doing for so many years . . .

A whole decade. And the one kiss she'd had since then had been forced upon her. A harsh, vicious a.s.sault she'd escaped when her attacker had been struck with a frying pan. After that, she'd never wanted to be touched again. Until now . . .

She had to stop . . .

But to her shock, she couldn't make herself pull away. Lyan broke the kiss, set her back on her feet and stared at her. With green eyes that gleamed as brilliant as lanterns.

"W-why did you do that?"

A sardonic grin twisted his handsome mouth. "I just wanted to see if it had been worth thinking about you for all these years."

His very answer terrified her. There was no hatred in his voice. Only regret. "And was it?" she asked coolly.

"Let's just say I can have my secrets too." But his gaze ravaged her mouth. And her lips were still so sensitive, just the heat in his vivid emerald eyes made her tremble.

"I promise you, Sal," he growled, "I will get to the truth. I will find out if you were involved with Lady Maryanne's disappearance. And I'll find out if you are keeping my daughter from me."

Lyan followed the tall, icily correct butler down the gloomy halls of Cavendish House he felt he was trailing a walking cadaver. As he neared his client's study, he planned what he would say. What he would reveal.

He hadn't expected Sally to give him any information. But he'd observed her shock when he'd said Maryanne was missing, and it had told him more than words. Sal had known he would question her about a marriage she'd never antic.i.p.ated a disappearance.

And he hadn't antic.i.p.ated kissing her. His mouth had been on hers before he'd realized what he was doing. Her kiss had burned a path through his hardened heart like a flame along a fuse. He couldn't think of anything but getting her back into his arms, keeping her there for ever, kissing and kissing and kissing her, until she was panting and needy and begging him to make love to her.

Never, on a job, did he lose control. Never had he let his s.e.xual desire take charge. He couldn't afford to do it now.

Yet knowing that, he was still mentally undressing Sally as he sauntered down the corridor of the Marquis of Cavendish's home. He could picture her slender body naked, completely bared to him, and draped sensuously across her desk. For his pleasure, he arranged her on her front on her small round b.r.e.a.s.t.s and smooth tummy with her naked rump saucily lifted to tempt him.

h.e.l.l.

Even with their past hanging between them, with her betrayal sitting in his gut like a knife blade, he had to admire her. He'd always known she was tough, but now he appreciated she was also intelligent and clever. A better life agreed with her. She had changed from a stick-thin seventeen-year-old with dirty hair to a tall, striking beauty. Her severe hairstyle had made him hunger to tear out her pins and watch the whisky-coloured ma.s.s fall down her back. He'd never guessed her hair was that rich amber hue. As for her dress, it was a plain sheath that clung to her slender figure. It's simplicity made him speculate how she would look without it.

If he hadn't known her from the past, he would have been enjoying himself. A canny, beautiful woman she was the type of adversary who made his work interesting.